


Where do people like us float

by uumuu



Series: Fëanorians beyond the First Age (AUs) [13]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Anal Sex, Deviates From Canon, Fix-It of Sorts, Incest, M/M, Non-Angsty Maglor, Uncle/Nephew Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 05:49:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15188171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: Maglor rescues Celebrimbor; Celebrimbor is happier about that than he ought to be.





	Where do people like us float

“I knew he was not who... _what_ he claimed to be. He was too kind and too understanding...too helpful. Annatar,” Celebrimbor scoffed, “the Valar never gave anything for free.”

“Then you took a greater risk than I imagined, though your intentions were good,” Maglor said in a tone that left no room for objection and held little in the way of sympathy. He looked formidable with his eyebrows drawn together and his eyes gleaming like ice. Celebrimbor didn't relish finding himself the recipient of that particular gaze. “All the more so, come away with me now.”

“I can't abandon –”

“This town is lost anyway! Let whoever wants to run, do it, and save your own life too. Sauron won't know you aren't here, and that will buy us enough time to hide.”

Celebrimbor stood up, nearly upturning his chair. He paced back and forth in his small, spare bedroom, where Maglor had suddenly intruded, uninvited, like a ghost. Celebrimbor couldn't deny his only surviving uncle's mere presence soothed him. After war with Sauron had become inevitable, even the most familiar things in Ost-in-Edhil had turned into sinister things, the hidden rocks against which his dreams and hopes had shattered and his doom threatened to catch up with him.

“How am I going to live with myself, knowing that the people who looked up to me all these centuries were being massacred while I fled?”

“I knew a queen who didn't have any such qualms. She even let her toddlers with me.” 

“Uncle!”

Maglor shrugged. Unfazedly, he pressed on. 

“Tyelpo, think of your father.”

At the mention of his father, Celebrimbor fell back into his chair, shoulders slumped. “If I think of my father the prospect of dying seems even less frightful. Rather appealing, really.”

“If you wish to die I can kill you and send you on your way to your father, chances are he will thank me...or we can take our lives together, too. But it will break your father's heart if you let Sauron catch you.”

Celebrimbor looked away, nervously picking at the buttons of his tunic. Maglor was right, of course. Of all the possible things that could happen to him that was by far the worst. “I'd like to think he'd be proud of me.” 

“In another circumstance, surely. Not when you can avoid it. Not when _I_ , his brother, am pleading with you to avoid it. Think of Uncle Nelyo. Don't you agree he's had enough grief to last an eternity? Think of Grandfather, who always looked after you and cosseted you.”

“Stop it!” Celebrimbor pulled on one of the buttons until it was torn from the fabric. “Curse it! Curse the day I didn't kick Sauron out of my town. Curse the rings and everything else!”

“You were brave, in your own way,” Maglor conceded. 

“I was a fool!”

“What is bravery without a dash of recklessness? It runs in the family.”

Maglor stood up.

Celebrimbor still wavered.

“Tyelpo, little one, do not break _my_ heart. I will leave you here if you truly wish to remain, but think of the pain that will inflict upon me.”

Celebrimbor couldn't if it was his own heart that gave in, of if Maglor put more power behind his words that he let on, even though they sounded like an entreat. Maglor was like that: you could never be sure how far he would go.

He stood up, lifted both of Maglor's hands and kissed them, a gesture at once deferential and affectionate. “I will do as you say, Father-Brother.”

*

“Your cooking is still lousy,” Celebrimbor muttered over a steaming bowl. He ate the stew heartily, however, despite the lack of any definite taste.

“You will have to endure for today. From tomorrow on I'll be happy to leave the cooking to you, if you wake up at a decent hour,” Maglor replied, smiling.

Celebrimbor gazed intently and eagerly him. Maglor was perfectly rested and full of energy, with not a hair out of place, as if he had not been trudging up the bare slopes of the Ered Luin until sunset on the previous day. 

They had made the whole trip from Eregion on foot, avoiding roads and open plains, stopping only to catch their breath until they made it to the mountains. From the Ered Luin, they had made out the last dying embers of the destruction of Ost-in-Edhil. Celebrimbor pushed the thought from his mind. He couldn't have saved the town, even if he had stayed, and a lifetime of regret was probably as fitting a punishment as torment and eventual death. 

“To think you were always so close...well, relatively close.”

Maglor lowered his eyes, his smile turning bewitchingly smug. 

“There are plenty of tales about your fate, as I'm sure you know. Some go into great detail about your state of mind and your decisions after you and Uncle Nelyo regained the Silmarils. Nearly all of them claim that you wander the lands in despair, burdened by pain and regret. I could never bring myself to believe any of that.”

“Because you know me.”

Celebrimbor chuckled. He pushed a sticky lock of tangled hair out of his face. He needed a bath, badly. “I know that you are calculating, insidious...a selfish bastard with a voice to drown minds..”

“The trick is to guess what people want to hear, and let them hear it aplenty. They certainly didn't want – or expect – to hear that the only thing I truly regret is losing my father and brothers. You put up quite a believable show of your own, didn't you?”

“It was Father's idea. But yes, it was extremely easy to gain people's trust by pretending to renounce my father's deeds. It would have been perfect, if that fool Orodreth hadn't gone and ruined everything.”

“It was our curse, that our kin would do everything to hinder us, even against their best interest.” 

Maglor stood up and retrieved a basketful of freshly roasted chestnuts from the hearth in the centre of the not-so-small hut.

Celebrimbor looked around for the first time in a non sleep-addled state. The hut was clean and full of crockery and tools as well as less useful trinkets, all neatly lined up on shelves or tucked away in baskets and chests. A small loom took up the corner opposite the bed. Even if Maglor had not been too taken with crafting during his life in Aman, he had picked up many skills from his father and brothers, and was more than capable of looking after himself. 

Nonetheless, Celebrimbor couldn't help but wonder how many of those objects were just an attempt to fill day after day of solitude, and of missing.

“Uncle Nelyo did a cruel thing to you, leaving you here by yourself.”

Maglor shook his head with the saddest smile Celebrimbor had ever seen. He looked into a time-worn distance, his fingers turning black as he peeled an ash-covered chestnut. “I knew Nelyo had no intention to keep on living. He could never come to terms with Father's death, and after our brothers died too he only held on to fulfil the Oath.”

“And he took the Oath to his grave.”

“My sweet older brother was conscientious to the end. He wanted to make sure the Oath would be fulfilled forever, and I wouldn't have to look after two Silmarils. Besides, I'm not completely alone. Many of my friends and allies live quietly in the mountains. And there are the Dwarves of what's left of Nogrod, who didn't want to abandon their home. They're very few, but very resilient. We could visit them. They would be happy to meet you, I'm sure. They even built a memorial to your father and uncles, part of a monument to celebrate the destruction of Doriath.”

“Oh my...our kin would have a fit if they heard about that.”

“No doubt.”

“Would they...would they not consider me a coward?”

“They know that hiding is the best course of action when all else fails.”

Maglor passed Celebrimbor a peeled chestnut.

They ate the rest of their late lunch in silence. When they were finished and Maglor cleared the dirty plates, Celebrimbor stood from the table and went to one of the windows. He opened the shutters, letting in the cool autumn breeze. He would have to fit the windows with glass panes before winter came. 

“Do you remember how this place looked?” he asked, gazing at the landscape which the sea cut short way too close to the mountains.

Maglor hummed a yes.

“I remember Lake Helevorn well, with uncle Moryo's vineyards and pastures on the north side of it. The water was crystal clear and the mountains were reflected on it on sunny days. It was a sight to behold, especially in autumn, with the bracken on the hills turned red and the grapevines too aflame with colour. Father liked to visit Thargelion, we often stopped there on our way to or back from the mountains, and he loved the lake.” Celebrimbor sighed, but his voice remained firm. “We fucked on the lake shore.”

“There are only small pools and burns now, though I think the water is the same. We could go swim in one of them before it gets too cold.”

Celebrimbor nodded absently, his mind still fixed on the past, on all those memories he had kept at bay for centuries on end, all the memories which his uncle's presence and the place combined to make all too vivid now. “I –...I thought of coming back to you after Nargothrond went down. I often think I should have.”

“You father was happy to know you were safe, though he did miss you terribly. We all did.”

Celebrimbor started to find Maglor standing right next to him. He slowly wrapped his arms around him and hugged him.

*

“I had no idea you were so rough in bed.” Maglor's voice hitched and faltered as Celebrimbor's thrusts jerked his body back into the pillows. “Were you so rough with your father too?” he asked in a hoarse murmur that went straight to Celebrimbor's groin.

“Don't remind me,” Celebrimbor hissed. He paused for an instant, pulled out and breached Maglor's softened hole again, breathing in long broken huffs. “I haven't fucked anyone since Father left me.” He pulled out, buried himself tip to base, and stilled again. “Who could have taken his place? It –...it felt like a sin to even take the idea into consideration.”

“I'm sorry I don't look more like your father.”

Celebrimbor shook his head. “In body, no. But –...you remember what Grandfather said? That you and father are identical twins of the mind. That is enough. More than enough.”

“That makes me happy.”

Maglor cupped Celebrimbor's face and drew him into a kiss, sticking his tongue inside Celebrimbor's mouth while Celebrimbor surged again and again between his legs. Their lips mashed together and their spit mingled, puffs of breath sucked and swallowed by the other's mouth.

The kiss left both of them even more breathless, and inflamed Celebrimbor even more. He fell into a frenzied rhythm again, the squelching of his thrusts grew louder, each one burying him to the hilt. His balls slapped against Maglor's ass. His forehead pearled with sweat, warm droplets running down the sides of it. Maglor relished it. He relished the slick friction of Celebrimbor's cock dragging against his walls, the throbbing of his passage stretched all around the thick hardness. He relished Celebrimbor's all-encompassing familiarity even if it was the first time they fucked each other. He slid his hands up and tangled them in Celebrimbor's raven hair, which was Curufin's hair and Fëanor's hair, and aroused a keen memory of both, giving him the sweet illusion that he was having sex with all three of them. Pulling down gently, he drew Celebrimbor's face towards his own and started kissing and nipping at his jaw, while pushing back with ass as if Celebrimbor could reach even deeper inside him. 

When they were both spent, they snuggled close together on the narrow bed, Maglor's back to Celebrimbor's chest, Celebrimbor's cock nestled against the dip between Maglor's buttocks.

“Were you planning this from the beginning?” Celebrimbor asked, his breath not entirely recovered yet.

“Does it matter?”

Celebrimbor wrapped his arm around Maglor's chest, pulling him even closer. He put his mouth to Maglor's ear and demanded, “tell me.” 

“I did anticipate we might end like this. Did you not?”

“...all my friends are dead, and here I am, fucking my uncle in place of my father...as my father.”

“Would it make a difference if you just kept listening when I sing, mesmerised, your desire so plain I could almost pluck it from your eyes and weave it into my fabrics?”

“It would make me less guilty towards the dead.”

“Or they might be happy to know you thwarted whatever plans Sauron had for you and are not just wallowing in misery either, don't you think?”

“But no-one would approve of this.”

“We always knew that, all of us.” Maglor covered Celebrimbor's hand with his own and firmly entwined their fingers together. “Tell me, weren't you thinking of your father when you put a giant Star of Fëanor in the middle of the very doors of Khazad-Dûm? I bet that did give quite a few upstanding elves a fit.”

“How do you know about that?”

“You think the news didn't spread like wildfire among the Dwarves?”

“Well, at least I left something good behind...unlike you.”

Maglor laughed. “Who knows, history might even make a martyr out of you.”

“That would be utterly ridiculous!”

“If I can be a lone, weeping wanderer, you can be the valiant martyr to a good cause,” Maglor said, still amused and happy to feel how Celebrimbor stirred behind him, and not just out of indignation. “But I do like what we can be together a lot more, and so do you.”

Celebrimbor sighed. “You know me too well.”

**Author's Note:**

> Some dwarves always remained in the Blue Mountains – I don't remember the sources off the top of my head but I remember reading about it in an article too.
> 
> I always wanted to write Maglor rescuing Celebrimbor, and finally came up with a story after talking about it with a friend a few weeks ago.
> 
> The title is from the song 'Keep the streets empty for me' by Fever Ray.


End file.
